Day 8: New Orleans, LA to Houston, TX

New Orleans by day and New Orleans by night are so different they are, well, night and day. The older one gets the more enjoyable the days are over the nights., at least for me There is always something going on but we really struck gold as the New Orleans French Quarter Festival started on Friday. Music and food all over the place.

From 2007 USA Elises

From 2007 USA Elises

Here is a little video of a jazz band playing.

We milled around there for a couple of hours, eating different dishes and listening to some great live music. One thing is for sure: the cities following New Orleans are going to have to do pretty well to match that. I actually experienced the first bit of sadness leaving New Orleans as we were leaving when a great event was starting. Also I had been there less than a year ago for the wedding of some good friends of mine and a wave of nostalgia for that great time swept over me.

But...nothing gets you over the last like the next, and we headed onto Houston. The drive there was made to feel longer than it actually was due to another thunderstorm but more so by the awful road between the two cities (I10). Not much happened during the drive. After entering Texas I was expecting to see more adventurous food, but was still a little aghast to see a big sign advertising a "Human Buffet". After some scrutiny I realised the M was just a really poorly crafted N.

Regarding the itinerary, we have decided to not go to Dallas. We played with the idea of taking the long trek through south Texas to El Paso, but after gathering a number of opinions we will do one day in San Antonio, then take the hill roads to Austin, and then go north west through Texas, staying in somewhere like Abilene or Lubbock, and then onto Santa Fe.

Some people have been asking where the in-car footage is. I have taken quite a bit of it, but the compact flash reader I bought in Panama City has stopped working already, so it is all stuck on the card still. I am not taking any more for fear of overwriting the earlier clips. As soon as I get a new way of retrieving the clips I will put some up.

From a technological struggle to a triumph: I have started using my phone to record little voice memos to myself when on the road as reminders when writing the blog. They are extremely handy, especially given my awful memory. Since learning this Jared suggested I do one day's blog as a podcast. It's an interesting thought, and if I can stay eloquent and interesting for sufficient time I may do one. Every voice memo I have recorded so far starts with "also..." which is really starting to annoy me, so I would have to fix that first :)